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THE MAN WITHOUT 
A COUNTRY 


BY 

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 


INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

HUBERT M. SKINNER, Ph. D. 


THE ORVILLE BREWER PUBLISHING CO. 

AUDITORIUM BLDG.. CHICAGO. 


LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

NOV 20 1905 

CwyrlcM Eiilry 

tf 


COPYRIGHT, 1905 

BY 

ORVILLE BREWER 



THE MODEL “STORY WITH A PURPOSE.’ 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


‘‘The story with a purpose” is not generally 
deemed a high form of literature. Whatever art 
the author may employ in its construction is 
subordinated to the “purpose” of the story. It 
is like the plea of a lawyer, which may possess 
literary merits, but which exhibits only such 
of these as will contribute to the success of his 
cause. Art in its higher forms, it is said, must 
be valued for its own sake, for it cannot be tram- 
meled by doing service to help a “cause.” 

Moreover, a “cause” is apt to be only tempo- 
rary. It holds the attention of the public for a 
time, and then gives place to something else; for 
issues are constantly changing. Great questions 
are sometimes permanently settled, and at other 
times pass unsettled from the public mind; and 
the literature relating to them is apt to be laid 
upon the shelf and forgotten. 

There are, however, some notable examples of 
“the story with a purpose” which has survived. 
Two such productions in American letters are 
characterized by so high an order of genius that 
they are likely to live as long as our literature 
1 


2 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 

endures. One of these is “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” 
by Harriet Beecher Stowe; the other is “The Man 
Without a Country,” by Edward Everett Hale. 
The former was put forth as a solemn protest 
against the institution of American slavery, at a 
time when public '^pinion and government pol- 
icy weJC in a state of transition regarding it, 
and ti^ book proved to be a most potent influence 
in moiling the sentiment of the great North in 
relatidii thereto. The story by Dr. Hale was 
written at a critical moment in the war time, 
for the purpose of awakening a deeper feeling 
of patriotism, and stirring the hearts of the 
people to a passionate intensity of love for their 
nation in its hour of trial and of peril. 

The circumstances attending the publication 
of “The Man Without a Country” must be un- 
derstood if we would appreciate its “purpose.” 

The early enthusiasm of the war had passed 
away, in ’63, and the people were sickened at its 
frightful cost in blood and treasure. There was 
mourning, there was bitter want, in every com- 
munity. The years were slowly dragging by, with 
continued calls for more troops, for greater bur- 
dens of taxes; and the end was not yet in sight. 
The cotton-spinners of Great Britain, deprived of 
work through the closing of the factories, were 
clamoring for their government to recognize the 
Southern Confederacy, and to aid in bringing the 
American war to a close. There was a growing 
sentiment in the North — timid at first in its ex- 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


3 


pression, but bolder as time went on — in favor of 
peace at any price. 

In this crisis two American pulpit orators came 
to the aid of the government in different ways, 
and rendered services which it might be difficult 
to overestimate. Henry Ward Beecher, of New 
York, visited Great Britain and appealed with 
burning eloquence to the suffering laborers in 
behalf of the Union cause in America. Edward 
Everett Hale, of Boston, in a peculiar disguise, 
addressed himself to all classes at home. 

Dr. Hale chose to depict the awful conse- 
quences of treason, in the life-long remorse of a 
man who, in his youth, had been seduced by the 
fascinating Aaron Burr into a conspiracy against 
his country. People will not allow themselves to 
be deeply moved by mere fiction; and the story, 
to have its desired effect, must be accepted as 
truth. Two things were absolutely necessary to 
its success: The deep feeling must be portrayed 
so naturally as to awaken responsive feeling on 
the part ■ of the reader, and the story must be 
so artfully arranged as to foil the investigators 
who would be certain to search the records of the 
country to prove or disprove it. How could 
such a man as the hero of this story be punished 
through a lifetime by order of an American 
court of justice — punished in the most unique 
manner possible to conceive of — without there 
being some record of the sentence and of its 


4 


THE MAH WITHOUT A COUHTRT. 


continued execution through all the administra- 
tions from Jefferson to Lincoln? 

Hale seized upon the burning of the Capital by 
the British in 1814, and the proverbial routine 
system of the ^‘departments’^ of the government, 
through which are perpetuated without question 
many things which have been simply “handed 
down,” and which nobody takes the responsibility 
to abolish, or undertakes the labor of tracing back 
to their origin. The frequent changes in the per- 
sonnel of the departments, before the days of 
“civil service reform,” were especially favor- 
able to such perpetuation of traditional things 
which nobody really understood. 

Dr. Hale’s story was ostensibly told by “Capt. 
Frederick Ingham,” of the navy, presumably 
a retired officer whom nobody happened to re- 
member, for nobody had heard or thought much 
about our absurd old navy through the long, long 
years of peace. 

The manner in which the story was told con- 
vinced the readers of the writer’s sincerity and 
honesty. It is so unassuming. The writer no- 
where seems to be certain that he is correct about 
this or about that matter. He is not sure of this, 
he may be in error as to that. He writes much 
from hearsay. But this is far more convincing 
to the reader than the most strenuous assertion 
of the truth of the story could be. The writer 
is always natural, always free from self-conscious- 
ness. He seems to be talking, rather than writ- 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 




ing. It is as though some stenographer, hidden 
behind a screen, had overheard and written down 
the honest fellow ^s story, told to some listening 
friend. There is nothing of the air of the forti- 
fied writer of history in all the narrative. It is 
this very naturalness that is the key to its suc- 
cess, and it is the frank disavowal of historical 
accuracy that impresses the reader with its essen- 
tial truth. 

The story appeared as a contribution to a 
periodical. Its effect was instantaneous and uni- 
versal. Throughout the North it was read or 
told in every village, and almost on every farm. 
Papers and magazines reproduced it or com- 
mented upon it at length. Ministers referred to 
it in the pulpits. It was told to the little ones 
in Sunday school talks. It was told to all the 
‘‘grades” in the schools. It was reproduced in 
every conceivable form in the current literature 
of the day, and in the conversation of the house- 
hold. Statesmen quoted it as history, and the 
Navy Department was bewildered by the inquiries 
addressed to it in reference to the career of the 
hero of the narrative. 

Dr. Hale’s name was not appended to the story, 
but by accident it did appear in connection with 
the title, in the index of the magazine. It was 
long, however, before the public learned that 
“Capt. Ingham” was a myth, and that the 
whole story was pure fiction. For a time the man 
who would dare to insinuate that the story was 


6 


THE MAH WITHOUT A COUHTRY. 


fictitious — to doubt the existence of a “Man 
Without a Country’^ — was actually liable to 
rough handling by his neighbors. 

The story accomplished its “purpose.’^ The 
voice of treason in the North was silenced. The 
people were re-baptized in devotion to their 
cause, and the critical period was passed in safety. 
To this great end the story contributed grandly, 
and in a measure which cannot be estimated. 

And then, when its “purpose’^ was accom- 
plished, and the people had slowly learned to for- 
give the writer for having misled them as to the 
truth of the story in its reference to “Philip No- 
lan,” they began to realize that in an “alge- 
braic,” or generalized, sense it was really true; that 
it was a true expression of human feeling. And 
then they realized that it was a literary model of 
its kind — one of the noblest specimens of “the 
story with a purpose,” and as such, worthy of 
a place in the permanent literature of the Eng- 
lish-speaking world. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


I suppose that very few casual readers of 
the ^‘New York Herald’’ of August 13, 1863, 
observed, in an obscure comer, among the 
‘ ‘ Deaths, ’ ’ the announcement— 

Nolan. Died, on hoard U. S. Corvette 
‘‘Levant,” Lat. 2° 11' S., Long. 131° W., on 
the 11th of May, Philip Nolan.” 

I happened to observe it, because I was 
stranded at the old Mission House in Mack- 
inaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer 
which did not choose to come, and I was de- 
vouring to the very stubble all the current lit- 
erature I could get hold of, even down to the 
deaths and marriages in the “Herald.” My 
memory for names and people is good, and 
the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had 
reason enough to remember Philip Nolan. 
There are hundreds of readers who would 
have paused at that announcement, if the offi- 
cer of the “Levant” who reported it had 
chosen to make it thus : ‘ ‘ Died, May 11, The 
Man Without a Countey.” For it was as 
“The Man Without a Country” that poor 
Philip Nolan had generally been known by the 
officers who had him in charge during some 


8 


iTHE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


fifty years, as, indeed, by all tlie men who 
sailed under them. I dare say there is many 
a man who has taken wine with him once a 
fortnight, in three years’ cruise, who never 
knew that his name was ‘‘Nolan,” or whether 
the poor wretch had any name at all. 

There can now be no' possible harm in tell- 
ing this poor creature’s story. Eeason enough 
there has been till now, ever since Madison’s 
administration went out in 1817, for very 
strict secrecy, the secrecy of honor itself, 
among the gentlemen of the navy who have 
had Nolan in successive charge. And cer- 
tainly it speaks well for the esprit de corps of 
the profession, and the personal honor of its 
members, that to tlie press this man’s story 
has been wholly unknown,— and, I think, to the 
country at large also. I have reason to think 
from some investigations I made in the Naval 
Archives when I was attached to the Bureau 
of Construction, that every official report relat- 
ing to him was burned when Ross burned the 
public buildings at Washington. One of the 
Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had 
Nolan in charge at the end of the war; and 
when, on returning from his cruise, he re- 
ported at Washington to one of tlie Crownin- 
shields,— who was in the Navy Department 
when he came home,— he found that the De- 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 9 

' 

partment ignored the whole business : V/hether 
they really knew nothing about it, or whether 
it was a mi ricordo/^ determined on as 

a piece of policy, I do not know. But this I 
do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, 
no naval officer has mentioned Nolan in his re- 
port of a cruise. 

But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy 
any longer. And now the poor creature is 
dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little 
of his story, by way of showing young Ameri- 
cans of today what it is to be A Man With- 
out A Country. 

Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as 
there was in the ‘‘Legion of the West,^’ as the 
Western division of our army was then called. 
When Aaron Burr made his first dashing 
expedition down to New Orleans in 1805, at 
Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, 
he met, as the Devil would have it, this gay, 
dashing, ‘bright young fellow ; at some dinner- 
party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to 
him, walked with him, took him a day or two’s 
voyage in his flat-boat and, in short, fascinated 
him. , For the next year, barrack-life was very 
tame to poor Nolan. He occasionally availed 
himself of the permission the great man had 
given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, 
stilted letters the poor boy wrote and rewrote 


10 the man without a country. 

and copied. But never a line did he have in 
reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys 
in the garrison sneered at him, because he 
sacrificed in this unrequited atfection for a 
politician the time which they devoted to Mo^ 
nongahela, hazard and high-low- jack. Bour- 
bon, euchre, and poker were still unknown. 
But one day Nolan had liis revenge. This time 
Burr came down the river, not as an attorney 
seeking a place for his office, but as a dis- 
guised conqueror. He had defeated I know 
not how many district attorneys ; he had dined 
at I know not how many public dinners; he 
had been heralded in I know not how many 
Weekly Arguses, and it was rumored that he 
had an army beliind him and an empire before 
him. It was a great day— his arrival— to poor 
Nolan. Burr had not been at the fort an hour 
before he sent for him. That evening he 
asked Nolan to take him out in his skiff, to 
show him a canebrake or a cotton-wood tree, 
as he said,— really to seduce him; and by the 
time the sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body 
and soul. From that time, though he did not 
yet know it, he lived as A Man Without a 
Country. 

) What Burr meant to do I know no more than 
you, dear reader. It is none of our business 
just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


11 


came, and Jefferson and the House of Virginia 
of that day undertook to break on the wheel 
all the possible Clarences of the then House of 
York, by the great treason trial at Richmond, 
some of the lesser fry in that distant Missis- 
sippi Valley, which was farther from us than 
Puget’s Sound is today, introduced the like 
novelty on their provincial stage ; and, to while 
away the monotony of the summer at Fort 
Adams, got up, for spectacles, a string of 
court-martials on the officers there. One and 
another of the colonels and majors were tried, 
and, to fill out the list, little Nolan, against 
whom. Heaven knows, there was evidence 
enough,— -that he was sick of the service, had 
been willing to be false to it, and would have 
obeyed any order to march any-whither with 
any one who would follow him had the order 
been signed, ‘^By command of His Exc. A. 
Burr.” The courts dragged on. The big 
flies escaped,— rightly for all I know. No- 
lan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet 
you and I would never have heard of him, 
reader, but that, when the president of the 
court asked him at the close whether he wished 
to say anything to show that he had always 
been faithful to the United States, he cried out, 
in a fit of frenzy ; 


12 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


‘‘Damn the United States! I wish I may 
never hear of the United States again ! ^ ’ 

I suppose he did not know how the words 
shocked old Colonel Morgan, who was holding 
the court. Half the officers who sat in it had 
served through the Eevolution, and their lives, 
not to say their necks, had been risked for the 
very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his 
madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the 
West of those days, in the midst of ‘‘Spanish 
plot,’^ “Orleans plot,^^ and all the rest. He 
had been educated on a plantation where the 
finest company was a Spanish officer or a 
French merchant from Orleans. His educa- 
tion, such as it was, had been perfected in com- 
mercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and I think 
he told me his father once hired an English- 
man to be a private tutor for a winter on the 
plantation. He had spent half his youth with 
an older brother, hunting horses in Texas; 
and, in a word, to him “United States’’ was 
scarcely a reality. Yet he had been fed by 
“United States” for all the years since he had 
been in the army. He had sworn on his faith 
as a Christian to be true to ‘ ‘ United States. ’ ’ 
It was “United States” which gave him the 
uniform he wore, and the sword by his side; 
Nay, my poor Nolan, it was only because 
“United States” had picked you out first as 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. I3 

one of her own confidential men of honor that 
Burr’’ cared for you a straw more than 
for the flat-boat men who sailed his ark for 
him. I do not excuse Nolan; I only explain 
to the reader why he damned his country, and 
wished he might never hear her name again. 

He never did hear her name hut once again. 
Prom that moment, Sept. 23, 1807, till the day 
he died. May 11, 1863, he never heard her 
name again. For that half-century and more 
he was a man without a country. 

Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. 
If Nolan had compared George Washington 
to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, ‘‘God save 
King George,” Morgan would not have felt 
worse. He called the court into his private 
room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a 
face like a sheet, to say : 

“Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court! 
The Court decides, subject to the approval of 
the President, that you never hear the name of 
the United States again.” 

Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. 
Old Morgan was too solemn, and the whole 
room was hushed dead as night for a minute. 
Even Nolan lost his swagger in a moment. 
Then Morgan added— 

“Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans 


14 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


in an armed boat, and deliver him to the naval 
commander there. ’ ^ 

The marshal gave his orders and the pris- 
oner was taken out of court. 

^^Mr. Marshal,’’ continued old Morgan, 
^^see that no one mentions the United States to 
the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects 
to Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request 
him to order that no one shall mention the 
United States to the prisoner while he is on 
hoard ship. You will receive your written 
orders from the officer on duty here this even- 
ing. The Court is adjourned without day.” 

I have always supposed that Colonel Mor- 
gan himself took the proceedings of the Court 
to Washington city, and explained them to Mr. 
Jefferson. Certain it is that the President ap- 
proved them— certain, that is, if I may believe 
the men who say they have seen his signature. 
Before the ‘^Nautilus” got round from New 
Orleans to the Northern Atlantic coast with the 
prisoner on board, the sentence had been ap- 
proved, and he was a man without a country. 

The plan then adopted was substantially the 
same which was necessarily followed ever 
after. Perhaps it was suggested by the neces- 
sity of sending him by water from Port Adams 
and Orleans‘. The Secretary of the Navy— it 
must have been the first Crowninshield, though 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


15 


he is a man I do not remember— was requested 
to put Nolan on board a government vessel 
bound on a long cruise, and to direct that be 
should be only so far confined there as to make 
it certain that he never saw or heard of the 
country. We had few long cruises then, and 
the navy was very much out of favor ; and as 
almost all of this story is traditional, as I have 
explained, I do not know certainly what his 
first cruise was. But the commander to whom 
he was intrusted,— perhaps it was Tingey or 
Shaw, though I think it was one of the younger 
men,— we are all old enough now,— regulated 
the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, 
and according tO' his scheme they were car- 
ried out, I suppose, till Nolan died. 

When I was second officer of the ‘‘Intrep- 
id,^’ some thirty years after, I saw the orig- 
inal paper of instructions. I have been sorry 
ever since that I did not copy the whole of it. 
It ran, however, much in this way: 

“Washington, (with a date, which 
must have been late in 1807.) 

“Sir:— You will receive from Lieutenant 
Neale the person of Philip Nolan, late a lieu- 
tenant in the United States Army. 

“This person on his trial by court-martial 
expressed, with an oath, the wish that he 
might ‘never hear of the United States again.’ 


16 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


‘ ‘ The Court sentenced him to have his wish 
fulfilled. 

‘ ^ For the present, the execution of the order 
is intrusted by the President to this Depart- 
ment. 

‘‘You will take the prisoner on hoard your 
ship, and keep him there with such precau- 
tions as shall prevent his escape. 

“You will provide him with such quarters, 
rations, and clothing as would he proper for 
an officer of his late rank, if he were a pas- 
senger on your vessel on the husiness of his 
Government. 

“The gentlemen on hoard will make any 
arrangements agreeahle to themselves regard- 
ing his society. He is to he exposed to no 
indignity of any kind, nor is he ever unneces- 
sarily to he reminded that he is a prisoner. 

^ ‘ ‘ But under no circumstances is he ever to 
hear of his country or to see any information 
regarding it; and you will especially caution 
all the officers under your command to take 
care, that, in the various indulgences which 
may he granted, this rule, in which his pun- 
ishment is involved, shall not he broken. 

“ It is the intention of the Government that 
he shall never again see the country which 
he has disowned. Before the end of your 
cruise you will receive orders which will give 
effect to this intention. 

‘ ‘ Bespectf ully yours, 

‘ ‘ W. Southard, for the 
‘ ‘ Secretary of the Navy. ’ ^ 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


17 


If I had only preserved the whole of this 
paper, there would he no break in the beginning 
of my sketch of this story. For Captain Shaw, 
if it were he, handed it to his successor in the 
charge, and he to his, and I suppose the com- 
mander of the Levant’^ has it today as his 
authority for keeping this man in his mild 
custody. 

The rule adopted on board the ships on 
which I have met ^Hhe man without a coun- 
try^’ was, I think, transmitted from the begin- 
ning. No mess liked to have him perma- 
nently, because his presence cut off all talk of 
home or of the prospect of return, of politics 
or letters, of peace or of war,— cut off more 
than half the talk men liked to have at sea. 
But it was always thought too hard that he 
should never meet the rest of us, except to 
touch hats, and we finally sank into one system. 
He was not permitted to talk with the men, un- 
less an officer was by. With officers he had 
unrestrained intercourse, as far as they and ho 
chose. But he grew shy, though he had favor- 
ites: I was one. Then the captain always 
asked him to dinner on Monday. Every mess 
in succession took up the invitation in its turn. 
According to the size of the ship, you had him 
at your mess more or less often at dinner. His 
breakfast he ate in his own state-room— he al- 


18 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


ways had a state-room— which was where a 
sentinel or somebody on the watch could see 
the door. And whatever else he ate or drank, 
he ate or drank alone. Sometimes, when the 
marines or sailors had any special jollification, 
they were permitted to invite ‘‘Plain-But- 
tons,” as they called him. Then Nolan was 
sent with some officer, and the men were for- 
bidden to speak of home while he was there. 
I believe the theory was that the sight of his 
punishment did them good. They called him 
“Plain-Buttons,” because while he always 
chose to wear a regulation army-uniform, he 
was not permitted to wear the army-button, for 
the reason that it bore either the initials or the 
insignia of the country he had disowned. 

I remember, soon after I joined the navy, 
I was on shore with some of the older officers 
from our ship and from the “Brandywine,” 
which we had met at Alexandria. We had 
leave to make a party and go up to Cairo and 
the Pyramids. As we jogged along (you went 
on donkeys then), some of the gentlemen (we 
boys called them ‘ ‘ Dons, ’ ’ but the phrase was 
long since changed) fell to talking about No^ 
Ian, and some one told the system which was 
adopted from the first about his books and 
other reading. As he was almost never per- 
mitted to go on shore, even though the vessel 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


19 


lay in port for months, his time at the best 
hung heavy ; and everybody was permitted to 
lend him hooks, if they were not published in 
America and made no allusion to it. These 
were common enough in the old days, when 
people in the other hemisphere talked of the 
United States as little as we do of Paraguay. 
He had almost all the foreign papers that came 
into the ship, sooner or later; only somebody 
must go over them first, and cut out any adver- 
tisement or stray paragraph that alluded to 
America. This was a little cruel sometimes, 
V7hen the back of what was cut out might be as 
innocent as Hesiod. Eight in the midst of one 
of Napoleon ^s battles, or one of Canning’s 
speeches, poor Nolan would find a great hole, 
because on the back of the page of that paper 
there had been an advertisement of a packet 
for New York, or a scrap from the President’s 
message. I say this was the first time I ever 
heard of this plan, which afterwards I had 
enough and more than enough to do with. I 
remember it, because poor Phillips, who was 
of the party, as soon as the allusion to reading 
was made, told a story of something which 
happened at the Cape of Good Hope on No- 
lan’s first voyage; and it is the only thing I 
ever knew of that voyage. They had touched 
at the Cape, and had done the civil thing with 


20 


•THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


the English Admiral and the fleet, and then, 
leaving for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, 
Phillips had borrowed a lot of English books 
from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed 
in these, was quite a windfall. Among them, 
as the Devil would order, was the ^ ^ Lay of the 
Last Minstrel,’^ which they had all of them 
heard of, but which most of them had never 
seen. I think it could not have been published 
long. Wiell, nobody thought there could be 
any risk of anything national in that, though 
Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out the 
Tempest from Shakespeare before he let 
Nolan have it, because he said ‘Hhe Bermudas 
ought to be ours, and, by J ove, should be one 
day.’^ So Nolan was permitted to join the 
circle one afternoon when a lot of them sat on 
deck smoking and reading aloud. People do 
not do such things so often now; but when I 
was young we got rid of a great deal of time 
so. Well, it so happened that in his turn Nolan 
took the book and read to the others; and he 
read very well, as I know. Nobody in the 
circle knew a line of the poem, only it was all 
magic and Border chivalry, and was ten thou- 
sand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily 
through the fifth canto, stopped a minute and 
drank something, and then began, without a 
thought of what was coming : 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


21 


‘‘Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said,’^— 

It seems impossible to us that anybody 
ever heard this for the first time ; but all these 
fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went 
on, still unconsciously or mechanically,— 

“This is my own, my nativ^e land!’^ 

Then they all saw something was to pay; 
but he expected to get through, I suppose, 
turned a little pale, but plunged on,— 

“Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned. 
As home his footsteps he hath turned 

From wandering on a foreign strand I— 

If such there breathe, go, mark him well,”— 

By this time the men were all beside them- 
selves, wishing there was any way to make 
him turn over two pages ; but he had not quite 
presence of mind for that ; he gagged a little, 
colored crimson, and staggered on,— 

“For him no minstrel raptures swell; 

High though his titles, proud his name. 
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim. 
Despite these titles, power, and pelf. 

The wretch, concentred all in self,”— 

And here the poor fellow choked, could not 
go on, but started up, swung the book into the 


22 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 

sea, vanished into his state-room, ‘^And by 
Jove,’’ said Phillips, ‘‘we did not see him for 
two months again. And I had to make up 
some beggarly story to that English surgeon 
why I did not return his Walter Scott to 
him.” 

That story shows about the time when No- 
lan’s braggadocio must have broken down. 
At first, they said, he took a very high tone, 
considered his imprisonment a mere farce, 
atfected to enjoy the voyage, and all that; 
but Phillips said that after he came out of his 
state-room he never was the same man again. 
He never read aloud again, unless it was the 
Bible or Shakespeare, or something else he 
was sure of. But it was not that merely. He 
never entered in with the other young men 
exactly as a companion again. He was al- 
ways shy afterwards, when I knew him, — 
very seldom spoke, unless he was spoken to, 
except to a very few friends. He lighted up 
occasionally,— I remember late in his life 
hearing him fairly eloquent on something 
which had been suggested to him by one of 
Flechier’s sermons,— but generally he had 
the nervous, tired look of a heart-wounded 
man. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


23 


When Captain Shaw was coming home,— 
if, as I say, it was Shaw,— rather to the sur- 
prise of everybody they made one of the 
Windward Islands, and lay otf and on for 
nearly a week. The hoys said the officers 
were sick of salt-junk, and meant to have 
turtle-soup before they came home. But 
after several days the ‘‘Warren’’ came to the 
same rendezvous; they exchanged signals; 
she sent to Phillips and these homeward- 
hound m,en letters and papers, and told them 
she was outward-bound, perhaps to the Medi- 
terranean, and took poor Nolan and his traps 
on the boat back to try his second cruise. 
He looked very blank when he was told to 
get ready to join her. He had known enough 
of the signs of the sky to know that till that 
moment he was going ‘ ‘ home. ’ ’ But this was 
a distinct evidence of something he had not 
thought of, perhaps,— that there was no go- 
ing home for him, even to a prison. And 
this was the first of some twenty such trans- 
fers, which brought him sooner or later into 
half our best vessels, but which kept him all 
his life at least some hundred miles from the 
country he had hoped he might never hear of 
again. 


24 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 

It may have been on that second cruise,-’' 
it was once when he was np the Mediter- 
ranean,— that Mrs. GrafP, the celebrated 
Southern beauty of those days, danced with 
him. They had been lying a long time in the 
Bay of Naples, and the officers were very inti- 
mate in the English fleet, and there had been 
great festivities, and our men thought they 
must give a great ball on board the ship. 
How they ever did it on hoard the ‘^Warren” 
I am sure I do not know. Perhaps it was not 
the ^‘Warren,’’ or perhaps ladies did not 
take up so much room as they do now. They 
wanted to use Nolan’s state-room for some- 
thing, and they hated to do it without asking 
him to the ball; so the captain said they 
might ask him, if they would be responsible 
that he did not talk with the wrong people, 
‘‘who would give him intelligence.” So the 
dance went on, the finest party that had ever 
been known, I dare say; for I never heard of 
a man-of-war ball that was not. For ladies 
they had the family of the American consul, 
one or two travelers who had adventured so 
far, and a nice bevy of English girls and 
matrons, perhaps Lady Hamilton herself. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


25 


Well, different officers relieved each other 
in standing and talking with Nolan in a 
friendly way, so as to be sure that nobody 
else spoke to him. The dancing went on with 
spirit, and after a while even the fellows who 
took tliis honorary guard of Nolan ceased to 
fear any contretemps. Only when some Eng- 
lish lady— Lady Hamilton, as I said, per- 
haps-called for a set of ^‘American dances,’^ 
an odd thing happened. Everybody then 
danced contra-dances. The black band, noth- 
ing loath, conferred as to what ‘^American 
dances ’ ’ were, and started off with ‘ ‘ Virginia 
Eeel,’^ which followed with ^‘Money-Musk,’’ 
which, in its turn in those days, should have 
been followed by “The Old Thirteen.” But 
just as Dick, the leader, tapped for his fid- 
dles to begin, and bent forward, about to 
say, in true negro state, “ ‘The Old Thir- 
teen, ’ gentlemen and ladies ! ” as he had said 
“ ‘Virginny Keel,’ if you please!” and 
“ ‘Money-Musk,’ if you please!” the cap- 
tain’s boy tapped him on the shoulder, whis- 
pered to him, and he did not announce the 
name of the dance; he merely bowed, began 
on the air, and they all fell to,— the officers 
teaching the English girls the figure, but not 
telling them why it had no name. 


26 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


But that is not the story I started to tell. 
As the dancing went on, Nolan and our fel- 
lows all got at ease, as I said,— so much so, 
that it seemed quite natural for him to how to 
that splendid Mrs. Graff, and say,— 

‘‘I hope you have not forgotten me. Miss 
Rutledge. Shall I have the honor of danc- 
ingT’ 

He did it so quickly, that Fellows, who was 
with him, could not hinder him. She laughed 
and said,— 

am not Miss Rutledge, any longer, Mr. 
Nolan; but I will dance all the same,” just 
nodded to Fellows, as if to say he must leave 
Mr. Nolan to her, and led him off to the place 
where the dance was forming. 

Nolan thought he had got his chance. He 
had known her at Philadelphia, and at other 
places had met her, and this was a Godsend. 
You could not talk in contra-dances, as you 
do in cotillions, or even in the pauses of 
waltzing; but there were chances for tongues 
and sounds as well as for eyes and blushes. 
He began with her travels, and Europe, and 
Vesuvius, and the French; and then, when 
they had worked down, and had that long 
talking time at the bottom of the set, he said 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


27 


boldly,— a little pale, she said, as she told 
me the story years after,— 

‘^And what do you hear from home, Mrs. 
Graff r’ 

And that splendid creature looked through 
him. Jove! how she must have looked 
through him! 

‘‘Home!! Mr. Nolan!!! I thought you 
were the man who never wanted to hear of 
home again! ’’—and she walked directly up 
the deck to her husband, and left poor Nolan 
alone, as he always was. He did not dance 
again. I cannot give any history of him in 
order; nobody can now; and, indeed, I am 
not trying to. 

These are the traditions, which I sort out, 
as I believe them, from the myths which have 
been told about this man for forty years. 
The lies that have been told about him are 
legion. The fellows used to say he was the 
“Iron Mask;” and poor George Pons went 
to his grave in the belief that this was the 
author of “Junius,” who was being pun- 
ished for his celebrated libel on Thomas Jef- 
ferson. Pons was not very strong in the 
historical line. 

A happier story than either of these I have 
told is of the war. That came along soon af- 


28 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTKY. 


ter. I have heard this affair told in three or 
four ways,— and, indeed, it may have hap- 
pened more than once. But which ship it was 
on I cannot tell. However, in one, at least, 
of the great frigate-duels with the English, 
in which the navy was really baptized, it 
happened that a round-shot from the enemy 
entered one of our ports square, and took 
right down the officer of the gun himself, and 
almost every man of the gun’s crew, j Now 
you may say what you choose about courage, 
but that is not a nice thing to see. But, as 
the men who were not killed picked them- 
selves up, and as they and the surgeon’s peo- 
ple were carrying off the bodies, there ap- 
peared Nolan, in his shirt-sleeves, with the 
rammer in his hand, and, just as if he had 
been the officer, told them offi with authority, 
—who should go to the cock-pit with the 
wounded men, who should stay with him,— 
perfectly cheery, and with that way which 
makes men feel sure all is right and is going 
to be right. And he finished loading the gun 
with his own hands, aimed it, and bade the 
men fire. And there he stayed, captain of 
that gun, keeping those fellows in spirits, till 
the enemy struck,— sitting on the carriage 
while the gun was cooling, though he was ex- 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTEY. 


29 


posed all the time,— showing them easier 
ways to handle heavy shot,— making the raw 
hands laugh at their own blunders,— and 
when the gun cooled again, getting it loaded 
and fired twice as often as any other gun 
on the ship. The captain walked forward by 
way of encouraging the men, and Nolan 
touched his hat and said,— 

am showing them how we do this in 
the artillery, sir.’’ 

And this is the part of the story where all 
the legends agree; the commodore said,— 
see you do, and I thank you, sir; and 
I shall never forget this day, sir, and you 
never shall, sir.” 

And after the whole thing was over, and 
he had the Englishman’s sword, in the midst 
of the state and ceremony of the quarter- 
deck, he said,— 

^^^Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan to 
come here. ’ ’ 

And when Nolan came, he said,— 

/^Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to 
you today; you are one of us today; you 
will be named in the despatches. ’ ’ 

And then the old man took off his own 
sword of ceremony, and gave it to Nolan, and 
made him put it on. The man told me this 


30 


THE MAN WITHOUT A' COUNTRY. 


who saw it. Nolan cried like a baby, and well 
he might. He had not worn a sword since 
that infernal day at Fort Adams. But al- 
ways afterward on occasions of ceremony, 
he wore that quaint old French sword of the 
commodore’s. 

The captain did mention him in the des- 
patches. It was always said he asked that 
he might be pardoned. He wrote a special 
letter to the Secretary of War. But nothing 
ever came of it. As I said, that was about 
the time when they began to ignore the whole 
transaction at Washington, and when No- 
lan’s imprisonment began to carry itself on 
because there was nobody to stop it without 
any new orders from home. 

I have heard it said that he was with Por- 
ter when he took possession of the Nukahiwa 
Islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old 
Porter, his father, Essex Porter,— that is, 
the old Essex Porter, not this Essex. As an 
artillery officer, who had seen service in the 
West, Nolan knew more about fortifica- 
tions, embrasures, ravelins, stockades, and 
all that, than any of them did; and he 
worked with a right good-will in fixing that 
battery all right. I have always thought it 
was a pity Porter did not leave him in com- 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


31 


mand with Gamble. That would have settled 
all the question about his punishment. We 
should have kept the islands, and at this mo- 
ment we should have one station in the Pa- 
cific Ocean. Our French friends, too, when 
they wanted this little watering-place, would 
have found it was preoccupied. But Madi- 
son and the Virginians, of course, flung all 
that away. 

All that was near fifty years ago. If No- 
lan was thirty then, he must have been near 
eighty when he died. He looked sixty when 
he was forty. But he never seemed to me to 
change a hair afterwards. As I imagine his 
life, from what I have seen and heard of it, 
he must have been in every sea, and yet al- 
most never on land. He must have known, 
in a formal way, more officers in our service 
than any man living knows. He told me once, 
with a grave smile, that no man in the world 
lived so methodical a life as he. ^‘You Imow 
the boys say I am the Iron Mask, and you 
know how busy he was. ’ ^ He said it did not 
do for any one to try to read all the time, more 
than to do anything else all the time; but 
that he read just five hours a day. ‘^Then,’^ 
he said, keep up my note-books, writing 
in them at such and such hours from what I 


32 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


have been reading ; and I include in these my 
scrap-books.^’ These were very curious, in- 
deed. He. had six or eight, of different sub- 
jects. There was one of History, one of 
Natural Science, one which he called ‘^Odds 
and Ends.” But they were not merely 
books of extracts from newspapers. They 
had bits of plants and ribbons, shells tied on, 
and carved scraps of bone and wood, which 
he had taught the men to cut for him, and 
they were beautifully illustrated. He drew 
admirably. He had some of the funniest 
drawings there, and some of the most pa- 
thetic, that I have ever seen in my life. I 
wonder who will have Nolan’s scrap-books? 

Well, he said his reading and his notes 
were liis profession, and that they took five 
hours and two hours respectively of each 
day. ‘‘Then,” said he, “every man should 
have a diversion as well as a profession.” 
My Natural History is my diversion.” That 
took two hours a day more. The men used 
to bring him birds and fish, but on a long 
cruise he had to satisfy himself with centi- 
pedes and cockroaches and such small game. 
He was the only naturalist I ever met who 
knew anytliing about the habits of the house- 
fly and the mosquito. All these people can 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


33 


tell you whether they are Lepidoptera or 
Steptopotera; but as for telling how you can 
get rid of them, or how they get away from 
you when you strike them,— why Linnaeus 
knew as little of that as John Foy, the idiot 
did. These nine hours made Nolan’s regu- 
lar daily ‘‘occupation.” The rest of the 
time he talked or walked. Till he grew very 
old, he went aloft a great deal. He always 
kept up his exercise ; and I never heard that 
he was ill. If any other man was ill, he was 
the kindest nurse in the world ; and he knew 
more than half the surgeons do. Then if 
anybody was sick or died, or if the captain 
wanted him to, on any other occasion, he was 
always ready to read prayers. I have said 
that he read beautifully. 

My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan 
began six or eight years after the English 
war, on my first voyage after I was appoint- 
ed a midshipman. It was in the first days 
after our Slave-Trade treaty, while the 
Reigning House, which was still the House 
of Virginia, had still a sort of sentimentalism 
about the suppression of the horrors of the 
Middle Passage, and something was some- 
times done that way. We were in the South 
Atlantic on that business. From the time I 


34 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


joined, I believe I thongbt Nolan was a sort 
of lay. chaplain,— a chaplain with a bine coat. 
I never asked about him. Everything in the 
ship was strange to me. I knew it was green 
to ask questions, and I suppose I thought 
there was a “Plain-Buttons’’ on every ship. 
We had him to dine in our mess once a week, 
and the caution was given that on that day 
nothing was to be said about home. But if 
they had told us not to say anything about 
the planet Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, 
I should not have asked why; there were a 
great many things which seemed to me to 
have as little reason. I first came to 
understand anything about “tlie man with- 
out a country” one day when we overhauled 
a dirty little schooner which had slaves on 
board. An officer was sent to take charge of 
her, and, after a few minutes, he sent back 
his boat to ask that some one might be sent 
him who could speak Portuguese. We were 
all looking over the rail when the message 
came, and we all wished we could interpret, 
when the captain asked who spoke Portu- 
guese. But none of the officers did ; and just 
as the captain was sending forward to ask 
if any of the people could, Nolan stepped out 
and said he should be glad to interpret, if 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTKY. 


35 


the captain wished, as he understood the lan- 
guage. The captain thanked him, fitted out 
another boat with him, and in this boat it 
was my luck to go. 

When we got there, it was such a scene as 
you seldom see, and never want to. Nasti- 
ness beyond account, and chaos run loose in 
the midst of the nastiness. There were not a 
great many of the negroes; but by way of 
making what there were understand that 
they were free, Vaughan had had their hand- 
cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for 
convenience^ sake, was putting them upon 
the rascals of the schooner ^s crew. The ne- 
groes were, most of them, out of the hold, 
and swarming all round the dirty deck, with 
a central throng surrounding Vaughan and 
addressing him in every dialect, and patois 
of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to the 
Parisian of Beledeljereed. 

As we came on deck, Vaughan looked 
down from a hogshead, on which he had 
mounted in desperation, and said:— 

‘^For God^s love, is there anybody who 
can make these wretches understand some- 
thing? The men gave them rum, and that 
did not quiet them. I knocked that big fel- 
low down twice, and that did not soothe him. 


36 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTBY. 


And then I taJked Choctaw to all of them to- 
gether; and I’ll he hanged if they under- 
stood that as well as they understood the 
English.” 

Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and 
one or two fine-looking Kroomen were 
dragged out, who, as it had been found al- 
ready, had worked for the Portuguese on the 
coast at Fernando Po. 

‘^Tell them they are free,” said Vaughan; 
‘‘and tell them that these rascals are to be 
hanged as soon as we can get rope enough.” 

Nolan “put that into Spanish,”— that is, 
he explained it in such Portuguese as the 
Kroomen could understand, and they in turn 
to such of the negroes as could understand 
them. Then there was such a yell of delight, 
clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kiss- 
ing of Nolan’s feet^ and a general rush made 
to the hogshead by way of spontaneous wor- 
ship of Vaughan, as the deus ex machina of 
the occasion. 

“Tell them,” said Vaughan, well pleased, 
“that I will take them all to Cape Palmas.” 

This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas 
was practically as far from the homes of 
most of them as New Orleans or Kio Janeiro 
was; that is, they would be eternally sepa- 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


37 


rated from home there. And their interpre- 
ters, as we conld understand, instantly said, 
*^Ah, non Palmas/* and began to propose in- 
finite other expedients in most voluble lan- 
guage. Vaughan was rather disappointed 
at this result of his liber ality, and asked No- 
lan eagerly what they said. The drops stood 
on poor Nolands white forehead, as he 
hushed the men down, and said:— 

^‘He says, ‘Not Palmas.’ He says ‘Take 
us home, take us to our own country, take us 
to our own house, take us to our own picka- 
ninnies and our own women.’ He says he 
has an old father and mother who will die if 
they do not see him. And this one says he 
left his people all sick, and paddled down to 
Fernando to beg the white doctor to come 
and help them, and that these devils caught 
him in the bay just in sight of home, and that 
he has never seen anybody from home since 
then. And this one says,” choked out No- 
lan, “that he has not heard a word from his 
home in six months, while he has been locked 
up in an infernal barracoon.” 

Vaughan always said he grew gray him- 
self while Nolan struggled through his inter- 
pretation. I, who did not understand any- 
thing of the passion involved in it, saw that 


38 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 

the very elements were melting with fervent 
heat, and that something was to pay some- 
where. Even the negroes themselves stopped 
howling, as they saw Nolan’s agony, and 
Vaughan’s almost equal agony of sympathy. 
As quick as he could get words, he said;— 

‘‘Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they 
shall go to the Mountains of the Moon, if 
they will. If I sail the schooner through the 
Great White Desert, they shall go home!” 

And after some fashion Nolan said so. 
And then they all fell to kissing him again, 
and wanted to rub his nose with theirs. 

But he could not stand it long ; and getting 
Vaughan to say he might go back, he beck- 
oned me down into our boat. As we lay back 
in the stern-sheets and the men gave way, he 
said to me: “Youngster, let that show you 
what it is to be without a family, without a 
home, and without a country. And if you 
are ever tempted to say a word or to do a 
thing that shall put a bar between you and 
your family, your home, and your country, 
pray God in his mercy to take you that in- 
stant home to his own heaven. Stick by your 
family, boy ; forget you have a self, while you 
do everything for them. Think of your home, 
boy; write and send, and talk about it. Let 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


39 


it be nearer and nearer to your thought, the 
farther you have to travel from it ; and rush 
back to it when you are free, as that poor 
black slave is doing now. And for your coun- 
try, boy,’^ and the words rattled in his throat, 
‘^and for that flag,’^ and he pointed to the 
ship, never dream a dream but of serving 
her as she bids you, though the service carry 
you through a thousand hells. No matter 
what happens to you, no matter who flatters 
you or who abuses you, never look at another 
flag, never let a night pass but you pray God 
to bless that flag. Eemember, boy, that be- 
hind all these men you have to do with, 
behind officers, and government, and people 
even, there is the Country Herself, your 
Country, and that you belong to Her as you 
belong to your own mother. Stand by Her, 
boy, as you would stand by your mother, if 
those devils there had got hold of her to- 
day!’^ 

I was frightened to death by his calm, hard 
passion ; but I blundered out that I would, by 
all that was holy, and that I had never 
thought of doing anything else. He hardly 
seemed to hear me; but he did, almost in a 
whisper, say: ^‘0, if anybody had said so 
to me when I was of your age ! ^ ’ 


40 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


I think it was this half-confideneo of his, 
which I never abused, for I never told this 
story till now, which afterward made us 
great friends. He was very kind to me. 
Often he sat up, or even got up, at night, to 
walk the deck with me, when it was my watch. 
He explained to me a great deal of my mathe- 
matics, and I owe to him my taste for mathe- 
matics. He lent me books, and helped me 
about my reading. He never alluded so di- 
rectly to his story again; but from one and 
another officer I have learned, in thirty years, 
what I am telling. When we parted from 
him in St. Thomas Harbor, at the end of our 
cruise, I was more sorry than I can tell. I 
was very glad to meet him again in 1830; 
and later in life, when I thought I had some 
influence in Washington, I moved heaven and 
earth to have him discharged. But it was 
like getting a ghost out of prison. They pre- 
tended there was no such man, and never 
was such a man. They will say so at the 
Department now ! Perhaps they do not know. 
It will not be the first thing in the service of 
which the Department appears to know noth- 
ing! 

There is a story that Nolan met Burr once 
on one of our vessels, when a party of Ameri- 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTEY. 


41 


cans came on board in the Mediterranean. 
But this I believe to be a lie; or, rather, it is 
a myth, hen trovato, involving a tremendous 
blowing-up with which he sunk Burr,— ask- 
ing him how he liked to be ‘‘without a coun- 
try.” But it is clear from Burras life, that 
nothing of the sort could have happened ; and 
I mention this only as an illustration of the 
stories which get a-going where there is the 
least mystery at the bottom. 

So poor Philip Nolan had his wish ful- 
filled. I know but one fate more dreadful; 
it is the fate reserved for those men who 
shall have one day to exile themselves from 
their country because they have attempted 
her ruin, and shall have at the same time 
to see the prosperity and honor to which 
she rises when she has rid herself of them 
and their iniquities. The wish of poor 
Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not 
because his punishment was too great, but be- 
cause his repentance was so clear, was pre- 
cisely the wish of every Bragg and Beaure- 
gard who broke a soldier’s oath two years 
ago, and of every Maury and Barron who 
broke a sailor’s. I do not know how often 
they have repented. I do know that they 
have done all that in them lay that they 


42 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTBY. 


might have no country,— that all the honors, 
associations, memories, and hopes which be- 
long to ‘‘country’’ might be broken up into 
little shreds and distributed to the winds. I 
know, too, that their punishment, as they 
vegetate through what is left of life to them 
in wretched Boulognes and Leicester 
Squares, where they are destined to upbraid 
each other till they die, will have all the 
agony of Nolan’s, with the added pang that 
every one who sees them will see them to 
despise and execrate them. They will have 
their wish, like him. 

For him, poor fellow, he repented of his 
folly, and then, like a man, submitted to the 
fate he had asked for. He never intention- 
ally added to the difficulty or delicacy of the 
charge of those who had him in hold. Acci- 
dents would happen; but they never hap- 
pened from his fault. Lieutenant Truxton 
told me that, when Texas was annexed, there 
was a careful discussion among the officers, 
whether they should get hold of Nolan’s 
handsome set of maps and cut Texas out of 
it,— from the map of the world and the map 
of Mexico. The United States had bebn cut 
out when the atlds was bought for him. But 
it was voted, rightly enough, that to do this 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


43 


would be virtually to reveal to him what had 
happened, or as Harry Cole said, to make 
him think Old Burr had succeeded. 

So it was from no fault of Nolan’s that a 
great botch happened at my own table, when, 
for a short time, I was in command of the 
George Washington corvette, on the South 
American station. We were lying in the La 
Plata, and some of the officers, who had been 
on shore and had just joined again, were 
entertaining us with accounts of their misad- 
ventures in riding the half-wild horses of 
Buenos Ayres. Nolan was at table, and was 
in an unusually bright and talkative mood. 
Some story of a tmnble reminded him of an 
adventure of his own when he was catching 
wild horses in Texas witli his adventurous 
cousin, at a time when he must have been 
quite a boy. He told the story with a good 
deal of spirit,— so much so, that the silence 
which often follows a good story hung over 
the table for an instant, to be broken by 
Nolan himself. For he asked perfectly un- 
consciously:— 

‘^Pray, what has become of Texas! After 
the Mexicans got their independence, I 
thought that province of Texas would come 
forward very fast. It is really one of the 


44 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTEY. 


finest regions on earth ; it is the Italy of this 
continent. But I have not seen or heard a 
word of Texas for near twenty years.’’ 

There were two Texan officers at the table. 
The reason he had never heard of Texas was 
that Texas and her affairs had been painfully 
cut out of his newspapers since Austin began 
his settlements; so that^ while he read of 
Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite 
lately, of California,— this virgin province, 
in which his brother had traveled so far, and, 
I believe, had died, had ceased to be to him. 
Waters and Williams, the two Texas men, 
looked grimly at each other and tried not to 
laugh. Edward Morris had his attention at- 
tracted by the third link in the chain of the 
captain’s chandelier. Watrous was seized 
with a convulsion of sneezing. Nolan him- 
self saw that something was to pay, he did 
not know what. And I, as master of the feast 
had to say,— 

Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. 
Have you seen Captain Back’s curious ac- 
count of Sir Thomas Eoe’s Welcome 

After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. 
I wrote to him at least twice a year, for in 
that voyage we became even confidentially in- 
timate; but he never wrote to me. The other 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, 


45 


men tell me that in those fifteen years he 
aged very fast, as well he might indeed, but 
that he was still the same gentle, uncomplain- 
ing, silent sutferer that he ever was, bearing 
as best he could his self-appointed punish- 
ment,~rather less social, perhaps, with new 
men whom he did not know, but more anxious, 
apparently, than ever to serve and befriend 
and teach the boys, some of whom fairly 
seemed to worship him. Alid now it seems 
the dear old fellow is dead. He has found 
a home at last, and a country. 

Since writing this, and while considering 
whether or no I would print it, as a warning 
to the young Nolans and Vallandighams and 
Tatnalls of today of what it is to throw away 
a country, I have received from Danforth, 
who is on board the ‘^Levant,” a letter which 
gives an account of Nolands last hours. It 
removes all my doubts about telling this 
story. 

To understand the first words of the letter, 
the non-professional reader should remem- 
ber that after 1817, the position of every 
officer who had Nolan in charge was one of 
the greatest delicacy. The government had 
failed to renew the order of 1807 regarding 
him. What was a man to do? Should he 


46 


THE MAlT WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


let him ^o? What, then, if he were called 
to account by the Department for violating 
the order of 1807? Should he keep him? 
What, then, if Nolan should be liberated 
some day, and should bring an action for 
false imprisonment or kidnapping against 
every man who had had him in charge? I 
urged and pressed this upon Southard, and I 
have reason to think that other officers did 
the same thing. But the Secretary always 
said, as they so often do at Washington, that 
there were no special orders to give, and that 
we must act on our own judgment. That 
means, ‘^If you succeed, you will be sus- 
tained; if you fail, you will be disavowed.’^ 
Well, as Danforth says, all that is over now, 
though I do not know but I expose myself to 
a criminal prosecution on the evidence of the 
very revelation I am making. 

Here is the letter: — 

^‘Levant, 2° 2' S. @ 131° W. 

^^Dear Fred:— I try to find heart and life 
to tell you that it is ali over with dear old 
Nolan. I have been with him on this voyage 
more than I ever was, and I can understand 
wholly now the way in which you used to 
speak of the dear old fellow. I could see that 
he was not strong, but I had no idea the end 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTKY. 


47 


was so near. The doctor has been watching 
him very carefully, and yesterday morning 
came to me and told me that Nolan was not 
so well, and had not left his state-room,— a 
thing I never remember before. He had let 
the doctor come and see him as he lay there, 
—the first time the doctor had been in the 
state-room,— and he said he should like to 
see me. Oh, dear! do you remember the 
mysteries we boys used to invent about his 
room in the old Hntrepid’ days? Well, I 
went in, and there, to be sure, the poor fel- 
low lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly as he 
gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I 
could not help a glance round, which showed 
me what a little shrine he had made of the 
box he was lying in. The stars and stripes 
were traced up above and around a picture of 
Washington, and he had painted a majestic 
eagle, with lightnings blazing from his beak 
and his foot just clasping the whole globe, 
which his wings overshadowed. The dear 
old boy saw my glance, and said, with a sad 
smile, ‘ Here, you see, I have a country I ^ And 
then he pointed to the foot of his bed, where 
I had not seen before a great map of the 
United States, as he had drawn it from mem- 
ory, and which be had there to look upon as 


48 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


he lay. Quaint, queer old names were on it, 
in large letters: ^Indian Territory,’ ^Mis- 
sissippi Territory,’ and ‘Louisiana Terri- 
tory,’ as I suppose our fathers learned such 
things; but the old fellow had patched in 
Texas, too; he had carried his western 
boundary all the way to the Pacific, but on 
that shore he had defined nothing. 

“ ‘G Danforth,’ he said, ‘I know I am dy- 
ing. I cannot get home. Surely you will tell 
me something now?— Stop! stop! Do not 
speak till I say what I am sure you know, 
that there is not in this ship, that there is 
not in America,— God bless her!— a more 
loyal man than I. There cannot be a man 
who loves the old flag as I do, or prays for 
it as I do, or hopes for it as I do. There are 
thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I 
thank God for that, though I do not know 
what their names are. There has never 
been one taken away: I thank God for that. 
I know by that that there has never been 
any successful Burr. 0 Danforth, Danforth, ’ 
he sighed out, ‘how like a wretched night’s 
dream a boy’s idea of personal fame or of 
separate sovereignty seems, when one looks 
back on it after such a life as mine! But 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


49 


tell me,— tell me something, tell me anything, 
Danforth, before I die!^ 

Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like 
a monster that I had not told him every- 
thing before. Danger or no danger, delicacy 
or no delicacy, who was I, that I should have 
been acting the tyrant all this time over this 
dear, sainted old man, who had years ago 
expiated, in his whole manhood ^s life, the 
madness of a boy’s treason? ‘Mr. Nolan,’ 
said I, ‘I will tell you everything you ask 
about. Only, where shall I begin?’ 

“Oh, the blessed smile that crept over his 
white face ! and he pressed my hand and said, 
‘God bless you!’ ‘Tell me their names,’ he 
said, and he pointed to the stars on the flag. 
‘ The last I know is Ohio. My father lived in 
Kentucky. But I have guessed Michigan 
and Indiana and Mississippi,— that was 
where Fort Adams is,— they make twenty. 
But where are your other fourteen? You 
have not cut up any of the old ones, I hope?’ 

“Well, that was not a bad text, and I told 
him the names in as good order as I could, 
and he bade me take down his beautiful map 
and draw them in as best I could with my 
pencil. He was wild with delight about 
Texas, told me how his cousin died there ; he 


50 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTBY. 


had marked a gold cross near where he sup- 
posed his grave was ; and he had guessed at 
Texas. Then he was delighted as he saw 
California and Oregon;— that, he said, he 
had suspected partly, because he had never 
been permitted to land on that shore, though 
the ships were there so much. ^And the 
men,^ he said, laughing, ‘brought off a good 
deal besides furs.’ Then he went back- 
heavens, how far!~to ask about the Chesa- 
peake, and what was done to Barron for sur- 
rendering her to the Leopard, and whether 
Burr ever tried again,— and he ground his 
teeth with the only passion he showed. But 
in a moment that was over, and he said, ‘ God 
forgive me, for I am sure I forgive him.’ 
Then he asked about the old war,— told me 
the true story of his serving the gun the day 
we took the Java,— asked about dear old 
David Porter, as he called him. Then he 
settled down more quietly, and very happily, 
to hear me tell in an hour the history of fifty 
years. 

‘ ‘ How I wished it had been somebody who 
knew something! But I did as well as I could. 
I told him of the English war. I told him 
about Fulton and the steamboat beginning. 
I told him about old Scott, and Jackson; told 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


51 


him all I could think of about the Mississippi, 
and New Orleans, and Texas, and his own 
old Kentucky. And do you think, he asked 
who was in command of the ^Legion of the 
West.’ I told him it was a very gallant offi- 
cer named Grant, and that, by our last news, 
he was about to establish his headquarters at 
Vicksburg. Then, ‘Where was Vicksburg?’ 
I worked that out on the map ; it was about 
a hundred miles, more or less, above his old 
Fort Adams; and I thought Fort Adams 
must be a ruin now. ‘It must be at Old 
Vick’s plantation, at Walnut Hills,’ said he: 
‘well, that is a change!’ 

“I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing 
to condense the history of half a century into 
that talk with a sick man. And I do not now 
know what I told him,— of emigration, and 
the means of it,— of steamboats, and rail- 
roads, and telegraphs,— of inventions, and 
books, and literature,- of the colleges, and 
West Point, and the Naval School,— but with 
the queerest interruptions that ever you 
heard. You see it was Eobinson Crusoe ask- 
ing all the accumulated questions of fifty-six 
years ! 

“I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who 
was President now ; and when I told him, he 


52 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lin- 
coln’s son. He said he met old General Lin- 
coln, when he was quite a boy himself, at 
some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe 
was a Kentuckian like himself, but I could 
not tell him of what family; he had worked 
up from the ranks. ^Good for him!’ cried 
Nolan ; H am glad of that. As I have brooded 
and wondered, I have thought our danger 
was in keeping up those regular successions 
in the first families.’ Then I got talking 
about my visit to Washington. I told him of 
meeting the Oregon Congressman, Harding; 
I told him about the Smithsonian, and the 
Exploring Expedition; I told him about the 
Capitol, and the statues for the pediment, 
and' Crawford’s Liberty, and Greenough’s 
Washington: Ingham, I told him everything 
I could think of that would show the grandeur 
of his country and its prosperity ; but I could 
not make up my mouth to tell him a word 
about this infernal rebellion ! 

^‘And he drank it in and enjoyed it as I 
cannot tell you. He grew more and more 
silent, yet I never thought he was tired or 
faint. I gave him a glass of water, but he just 
wet his lips, and told me not to go away. Then 
he asked me to bring the Presbyterian ‘ Book 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


53 


of Public Prayer, ’ which lay there, and said, 
with a smile, that it would open at the right 
place,— and so it did. There was his double 
red mark down the page; and I knelt down 
and read, and he repeated with me, ^For our- 
selves and our country, 0 gracious God, we 
thank Thee, that, notmthstanding our mani- 
fold transgressions of Thy holy laws. Thou 
hast continued to us Thy marvellous kind- 
ness,^— and so to the end of that thanksgiv- 
ing. Then he turned to the end of the same 
book, and I read the words more familiar to 
me: ‘Most heartily we beseech Thee with 
Thy favor to behold and bless Thy servant, 
the President of the United States, and all 
others in authority,’— and the rest of the 
Episcopal collect. ‘Danforth,’ said he, ‘I 
have repeated those prayers night and morn- 
ing, it is now fifty-five years.’ And then he 
said he would go to sleep. He bent me down 
over him and kissed me; and he said, ‘Look 
in my Bible, Danforth, when I am gone. ’ And 
I went away. 

“But I had no thought it was the end. I 
thought he was tired and would sleep. I 
knew he was happy, and I wanted him to be 
alone. 

“But in an hour, when the doctor went in 


54 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 


gently, he found Nolan had breathed his life 
away with a smile. He had something pressed 
close to his lips. It was his father’s badge 
of the Order of the Cincinnati. 

^‘We looked in his Bible, and there was a 
slip of paper at the place where he had 
marked the text:— 

‘ ^ ‘ They desire a country, even a heavenly : 
wherefore God is not ashamed to be called 
their God : for He hath prepared for them a 
city.’ 

‘ ^ On this slip of paper he had written : 

‘Bury me in the sea; it has been my 
home, and I love it. But will not some one 
set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams 
or at Orleans, that my disgrace may not be 
more than I ought to bear ? Say on it:— 

Memory of 
“‘PHILIP NOLAN, 

'' 'Lieutenant in the Army of the United States. 


“ ‘He loved his country as no other man has loved 
her; but no man deserved less 
at her hands.^ 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 


OF 

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 


Edward Everett Hale, — author, editor, clergy- 
man, and philanthropist, — ^was born in 1822, in 
Boston, Mass., in which city he now resides. His 
family has been distinguished through several gen- 
erations. 

In youth he was a pupil at the Boston Latin 
School (in which he was afterwards usher), and 
in 1839 he was graduated from Harvard. A busy 
boy he was; and after the hours of study, and es- 
pecially in vacations, he proved an expert type- 
setter in his father’s printing office, and an accur- 
ate and pleasing newspaper writer. 

While usher in the Latin school, for a couple of 
years after graduation, he read theology with such 
eminent divines as Lathrop and Palfrey, and in 
’42 he was licensed to preach, connecting himself 
with the association of Congregational ministers. 

For several years after, he gave most of his at- 
tention to newspaper work, in every department 
of which he seemed an adept. As “South Ameri- 
can editor” he was distinguished for the extent 
and accuracy of his information relating to the 
men and measures of Spanish America. (The 
55 


56 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


reader may recall Mr. Hale’s amusing skit entitled 
‘ ‘ The South American Editor. ”) The young jour- 
nalist spent the winter of 1844-5 in Washington, 
amid the incidents and excitements of the out- 
going administration of President Tyler, and the. 
rapidly approaching war with Mexico. 

Mr. Hale’s settled ministerial life began in ’46, 
in Worcester, Mass., where for ten years he was 
pastor of the Church of Unity. In ’56 he accepted 
a call to the South Congregational (Unitarian) 
Church of Boston, with which he has since been 
connected. 

It is not easy to say when his career as an author 
began, as almost his whole life has been full of 
literary work. But in ’59 he set the whole country 
in a roar of laughter by one of the most complete 
and perfect satires ever written. ^‘My Double and 
How He Undid Me ’ ’ contains no element of rancor, 
but will ever remain one of the masterpieces of 
genial humor. 

In ’63 there dropped from the literary press a 
thrilling narrative of infinite pathos, having the 
versimilitude of authentic history, which like a re- 
sponsive chord in music answered to the yearnings 
and aspirations of the age. In the United States, 
in Germany and in Italy the forces were working- 
out the destinies of national union. It was the age 
of nation-building. The history of “The Man 
Without a Country,” so tenderly yet so powerfully 
related, could scarcely have appeared in any other 
time. It was at once accepted for truth. The ma- 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


57 


terial value of the story consisted not so much in 
its profound emotional effect, or in the stimulus it 
gave to historical research, as in its influence in 
filling the ranks of President Lincoln ^s armies with 
young men, whose patriotism was stirred to action 
by the power of the masterly delineator. The pub- 
lic was amazed to find that the story of Philip No- 
lan, the exile, was pure fiction, and that the tear- 
commanding and soul-thrilling ^‘Capt. Ingham, 
in whose name it first appeared, was none other 
than the mirth-provoking author of ‘ ‘ My Double. ^ ' 

In ’66 Dr. Hale contributed to the Galaxy ‘‘The 
Skeleton in the Closet. ’ ’ Two years later appeared 
his “If, Yes, and Perhaps.” In ’69 he undertook 
the publication of “Old and New,” which became 
merged into “Scribner’s Monthly,” and eventually 
into “The Century Magazine.” In ’76 he con- 
tributed “Philip Nolan’s Friends.” 

In later years Dr. Hale has turned his attention 
more to biography and history. “Franklin in 
France” appeared in ’87, and also “The Life of 
Washington.” “The Lights of Two Centuries” 
was prepared in ’86, for the special use of the 
Reading Circles of various States. Within a few 
months after its first appearance nearly ten thou- 
sand copies were sold in Indiana alone. 

As a philanthropist, Dr. Hale’s influence has 
been world- wide ; and he has lived to see the result 
of his labors as few are ever privileged to behold it. 
The publication of “Ten Times One is Ten,” in ’70, 
led to the organization of charity associations known 


58 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


as ‘‘Harry Wadsworth Clubs.” These spread with 
surprising rapidity in America, and chapters were 
speedily organized in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, 
and in the isles of the sea. Several years ago the 
membership of these clubs aggregated over fifty 
thousand persons. Their oft-quoted motto is 
“Look up, not down; look forward, not back; look 
out, not in; lend a hand!” “The Look-up Le- 
gion,” an organization of Sunday-School children, 
on a similar plan, numbers also many thousands of 
members. “The Daughters of the King” owe their 
admirable organization to the same generous im- 
pulse. 

Dr. Hale has filled various positions of honor 
and trust, and has been compelled to decline many 
others. He has served as member of the Board of 
Overseers of Harvard University. He has been 
one of the Counsellors of the Chautauqua enter- 
prise, which he has generously aided. He has been 
President of the well-known college fraternity, the 
Phi Beta Kappa. 

Throughout his life Dr. Hale has exhibited a 
surprising industry, accomplishing a vast amount 
of most valuable labor. A mere list of his writings 
would of itself form a considerable pamphlet. 


GENERAL NOTES. 


1. The author availed himself of the natural in- 
terest of the public in contemporary events, by pretending 
to quote, from a recent newspaper a notice of the death 
of his hero. Many a reader who would not have cared 
to enter upon a story of the long ago was caught by the 
first sentence of the story, which claimed to relate a 
mysterious current event. The author was safe in pre- 
tending to quote an obscure paragraph from a recent 
newspaper, since such papers are rarely preserved. 

2. The name of the ship was chosen advisedly, and 
with care. There had been such a ship, but it had been 
lost at sea, a short time before, although proof of its 
loss had not been produced. Its name had a familiar 
sound, although the public knew little about the navy 
in the years before the v/ar. 

3. The capital city of Washington was barbarously 
burned by the British in 1814, in the War of 1812, while 
James Madison was President. 

4. The Crowninshields were Secretaries of the Navy; 
Jacob Crowninshield serving from 1805 to 1809, and 
Benjamin Crowninshield from 1814 to 1818. Various 
members of this distinguished family have been con- 
nected with the Department of the Navy through many 
administrations. The name is pronounced as though it 
were spelt Crunshell. 

5. Parton’s “Life of Andrew Jackson” contains an 
interesting account of Aaron Burr’s mysterious con- 
spiracy, and Irving’s “Sketchbook” contains the story of 
Blennerhasset, who was involved in the treason. 

6. Commodore David Porter, the hero of “The Essex,” 
in the great naval battle off Valparaiso, Chile, in the 
War of 1812, was the father of Admiral David Dixon 
Porter, who was in command of our vessels on the Gulf 
coast in ’63. In honor of Commodore Porter, Valparaiso 

59 


60 


GENERAL NOTES. 


and Porter county in Indiana were so named. The wife 
of Commodore Porter composed the well-known ballad, 
“Thou Hast Wounded The Spirit That Loved Thee.” 

7. “Old Col. Morgan,” “poor Phillips,” “Captain 
Shaw,” “Mrs. Graff,” “Vaughan,” “Edward Morris,” 
“Watrous,” “poor Pons,” and “Danforth,” who are re- 
ferred to so familiarly that the reader seems to have 
known them, were purely fictitious characters. 

8. The Order of the Cincinnati was organized early 
in our history by participants in the Revolutionary 
War. It was strongly opposed, as fostering a spirit of 
special privilege, and laying a foundation for an Amer- 
ican order of “nobility,” since its membership, as 
planned, was to be hereditary. The organization was 
in time abandoned in most of the States; but of this 
abandonment “Philip Nolan” was supposed to be un- 
aware. 


WORD STUDIES. 


1. How many expressions from foreign and ancient 
languages are contained in this story? Is this a large 
number, considering the time in which it was written? 
Are foreign expressions in popular books less favored 
now than then? When are such expressions justifiable? 

2. From what language is taken the expression 
“esprit de corps!” (See “Quotations, Words, Phrases,” 
etc., in the “International Dictionary.”) Have we any 
word or any short phrase, in English, that will express 
the same idea? Is its use, then, justifiable? 

3. From what language is taken the expression 
“non mi ricordof” What does it mean? Is it in com- 
mon use among educated people? 

4. From what language is taken the word “contre- 
temps f” Have we a single word which corresponds to 
it precisely? 

5. From what language are taken the scientific 
names “lepidoptera” and “steptopteraf” Why are the 
genera and species of the animal world and the vege- 
table world all Latin in form? Are scientists In all 
lands acquainted with Latin? Are they with any other 
one language? Does a dead language change in the 
meaning of its words? Is there a tendency to change 
in the meanings of words in a language that is spoken? 
Does a scientist require to know the etymology, or root 
meaning, of the names of species and genera? (No; 
no more than in the case of names of men or of cities. 
The descriptions expressed in the names are often un- 
scientific and misleading. Often the names are merely 
fanciful. It is not worth while to devote much study 
to their etymologies. Their Latin form is all that is 
necessary to understand.) 

5. From what language is taken the expression “deus 
ex machinal” What does it mean? (For students of 
Latin.) What is meant by the following famous rule 

61 


62 


WORD STUDIES. 


of Horace, relating to the deus ex machinaf **Nec deus 
inter sit nisi dignus vindice nodus incideritf' 

6. What did the Africans mean by “Aon Palmas 
Where is Cape Palmas? From v/hat language are the 
words taken? Why were African slaves more apt to 
learn Portuguese words than those of any other Euro- 
pean tongue? 

7. From what language is taken the expression “ben 
trovatof’ What does it mean? 


HISTORICAL STUDIES. ' 

1. What important State election in ’63 attracted 
the attention of the whole country? Why? 

2. What important political campaign was approach- 
ing? Why was the Government especially anxious in 
reference to it? Did Presidential campaigns then begin 
earlier in the year than nov/? 

3. What were the important military events of ’63 
after the brilliant victories of Vicksburg and Gettys- 
burg? 

4. Is it now customary to apply the term “His Ex- 
cellency,’’ to the President or to the Vice-President? 
Was the term ever so commonly used as to be abbre- 
viated into “His Exc.?” 

5. Who was Aaron Burr? What is his traitorous 
scheme supposed to have been? Was he proved guilty? 
What does Irving say of him in connection with Blen- 
nerhasset, in “The Sketchbook?’’ What was Burr’s sub- 
sequent career? Have you ever heard of Theodosia 
Burr, his famous daughter, about whose mysterious 
fate so many stories have been written and told? 

6. What were the States of the Union at the time 
when Nolan is supposed to have been banished? What 
were the boundaries of the nation at that time? 


HISTOEICAL STUDIES. 63 

7. What is the Smithsonian Institution? When and 
where and how was it established? 

8. Who was Vallandigham? Who was Tatnall? Who 
were the Porters? Who were the Crowninshields? 

9. When did Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel” make 
its appearance? 

10. Where were the “Mountains of the Moon” for- 
merly supposed to be, in Africa? What was the “Great 
White Desert?” Is the Sahara now owned by European 
powers? 


LITERARY STUDIES. 

1. In how many places does the author express his 
doubt as to the accuracy of his memory or of his infor- 
mation? How does this seeming candor on his part 
have the effect to fortify the essential truth of the 
story? Would the impression of its truth have been 
equally strong if he had insisted upon its truth? 

2. In what places does he fall into a colloquial style 
of expression? Is this natural? 

3. Where, in the story, do you find little touches of 
sentiment? 

4. Where does the author blend the ludicrous and 
the pathetic in one and the same description? Is this 
easy to do successfully? 

5. Are the author’s illustrations and comparisons 
forcible? Does this indicate feeling, or excitement, on 
the part of the speaker? 

6. What were the “Letters of Junius?” (See any 
history of English literature.) Have the stories of “The 
Man with the Iron Mask” any foundation in fact? 

7. Is the author’s style simple, or involved? Is his 
narrative easy to read? Is its meaning always clear? 

8. Does the story end with a suitable climax? Is it 
easy to close so emotional a story in a suitable manner? 


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